A Quarter Century of Unix

Salus has chosen and edited his source material well, however, and inserted his own summary and exposition in appropriate places. The result is a great read, with the voices of the various creators providing unique perspectives on the events they participated in (some scores of people are quoted from at length).

Author: Peter H.
Salus

Publisher: Addison-Wesley
1994

ISBN:
0-201-54777-5

Reviewer: Danny
Yee

Summary: From Space Travel to
Plan 9 and Linux

A Quarter Century of Unix is a history
of Unix, a kind of annotated collection of reminiscences. It begins
at the “birth” of Unix, with Ken Thompson looking for a machine to
play Space Travel on, then jumps back to provide the context, both
in the history of computing in general and in the particular setup
at Bell Labs. Part two describes the work done up to 1974, both on
Unix and on the tools and language (C) so closely associated with
it. Part three tries to pin down some of the things that made Unix
unique: its style, the strong contributions by users and user
groups, and the key role of some of its more famous tools. Parts
four and five trace the expansion of Unix: the development of BSD
and the commercial Unixes, the creation of SUN, the ambivalent
relationship with DEC, legal issues and attempts at
standardization. The final section offers an overview of the
current status of Unix in its many different versions and offers
some ideas about where it is heading. There is also a very brief
glance at some of the systems that it has influenced, including
Bell Lab's new Plan 9 system. The finale has Dennis Ritchie, Brian
Kernighan and others offering their ideas on what made Unix work.
Particularly noteworthy is the solid treatment of legal issues
(three chapters altogether) and the coverage of events outside the
United States (in Australia, Europe and Japan).

The format of A Quarter Century of Unix,
with most of the text in the form of extended quotations, runs the
risk of discontinuity and lack of focus. Salus has chosen and
edited his source material well, however, and inserted his own
summary and exposition in appropriate places. The result is a great
read, with the voices of the various creators providing unique
perspectives on the events they participated in (some scores of
people are quoted from at length).

I did spot a few minor inconsistencies in the text—on page
155 we read “It was 32V that became 3BSD in 1979”, though the Unix
versions tree on page 61 shows no such influence—and errors—on
page 253 we have “It was clear that AT&T hadn't objected to
other derivatives: Linux, MINIX, etc. In the autumn of 1988...”,
implying that Linux existed in 1988 (and Linus' name is misspelled
in the index, too). But these are just quibbles. A more weighty
criticism would be that the book sometimes reads more like myth
than history, with the participants portrayed like epic heroes.
(It's rather obvious that Salus himself is a Unix fan.) This may
worry the historians, but in a way it is the legends and myths that
are the most influential, so the distinction is perhaps
moot.

A Quarter Century of Unix doesn't assume
specialized knowledge, but the more you know about Unix (and to a
lesser extent, about architectures and operating systems) the more
you will get out of it—if you've never used awk, for example, you
will probably have little interest in reading about its origins and
development. The main audience will be programmers, administrators,
and users with extensive Unix experience. Historians and
sociologists of the computer industry will find Salus' work an
essential source of primary material, and marketing types might
well learn a thing or to from it. A Quarter Century of
Unix should be a great success; it's just unfortunate
that it wasn't written years ago!